


How to Bake

by azriona



Series: Advent Calendar Drabbles 2014 [9]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Advent Calendar Drabble, F/M, Johnlockary - Freeform, M/M, Multi, Threesome - F/M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-09
Updated: 2014-12-09
Packaged: 2018-02-28 19:06:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 879
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2743775
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/azriona/pseuds/azriona
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>How Mary learned to bake bread.  (Or, a lesson in euphemisms.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	How to Bake

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sadbhyl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sadbhyl/gifts).



> This is the ninth installment of the 2014 Advent Calendar Drabbles, and the first that deserves higher than a PG rating. Yay, me! Drabbles are usually titled with the prompt, but not today. Today’s prompt is from sadbhyl, who requested Johnlockary with BAMF, unapologetic, and cooking. I did the first, modified the last, and ignored the middle two. 
> 
> Credit where credit is due: I could not have written this without the line “Discovery takes experimentation” from Agents of Shield Episode 2:08, which I was watching while I was brainstorming this story. And it occurred to me that the line can also be applied to new relationships, which let’s face it, is a way more cheerful way of utilizing it.

The first time Mary had tried to bake bread, she looked in every cookbook she could find for a recipe.  She read them all, compared the various methods and lists of ingredients before choosing the one to follow.  And she followed it, to the letter, and ended up with a doorstop.

 

This – there’s no recipe for this, though she looks online one night when she can’t sleep, her face lit only by the screen while John snores behind her.  She finds countless recipes of a sort, recipe lists of hows and whys and whens, reviews from others saying, “Yes, yes, this method worked for me.”

 

The second time Mary tried to bake bread, she had three books open not to the recipes, but to the chemistry of it.  Add sugar or honey to the warm water before adding the yeast; yeast reacts to something sweet. Stir in the flour, let the mixture sit before adding the salt; salt inhibits the formation of gluten strands.  Knead continuously, strengthening the gluten, before letting the carbon dioxide build as the dough rises.

 

His lips are sweet with powdered sugar when she kisses him.  His mouth is damp with it; she can hear John breathing, labored and heavy, close by, and she closes her eyes, tastes the sugar now on her own lips.  She licks it off; it clumps on her tongue.

 

John clears his throat; her stomach twists and her heart stutters, waiting for him to react, to explode, to speak – and when she opens her eyes, she sees him leaning into them, his eyes downcast, led into what they’ve created between them. 

 

They stand so still, the three of them, a perfect triangle, pressed together for warmth, their breath rising and falling between them.  Mary can’t taste the sugar on her lips anymore but her heart is pounding with the rush of it.  Sherlock on her left and John on her right.  She can barely breathe with it.

 

“ _Fuck_ ,” says John, and his voice is low and gravelly, rough and strewn with longing.  The word could begin or end them, but he moves into them, kissing Mary’s cheek roughly before he reaches up to kiss Sherlock, Mary pressed into them both.  She can’t help it, she presses her forehead to his cheeks, kisses them both, clutches at their necks, anxious to join in.  She can taste the salt on their cheeks, feel their stuttering breaths, and they pull her closer as they move and writhe together, breaking off to bring her in.

 

It’s not John kissing Sherlock or Sherlock kissing Mary or Mary kissing John; she’s lost track of who breathes whose air, who touches whose arm, who is back against the brick wall while the other two squirm against them and who is exposed with the air on their backs.

 

The second time Mary tried to bake bread, she let the dough rise not by the time but by the feel of it; she measured it with her fingers and her gut.  She turned it out onto the floured surface, tried not to let the air out when she split it in two, patting it into loaves of more or less equal size.  She folded the halves like a letter into thirds, before she laid them to rest in the pans.  She let it rise a little more, and then put them in the oven, bit her lip, and prayed.

 

The rain in pounding down on them when they break away from the wall, holding hands and running the rest of the way home.  Mary can barely feel the water coursing down her skin; her fingers long to be running through Sherlock’s hair, running down John’s neck, working their way into Sherlock’s shirt, grabbing John by the belt and pulling him close. 

 

They fly, lighter than air, in through the door and then they’re doing just that – Sherlock’s hands pushing away Mary’s coat and John’s hands shoving down Sherlock’s trousers and Mary’s hands drawing them down onto the snowy white sheets in the bedroom, gently so that they don’t fall and lose their breaths. 

 

She’s breathless anyway; their skin next to hers, feeling it run rough over her.  She can almost hear them as they rub against each other, but really it’s the three of them, all together, turning over and over, folding themselves together. 

 

And it still building, that pressure inside, she’s still on edge, still expanding out, still reaching out for them, still desperate, still wanting, still _needing_ , still about to fall, still warm and cold and hot and light and when the final blast of heat comes, when she cries out and lifts off the bed, when she hears them shout and groan and their breath is lost in the pillows and blankets… she closes her eyes and stops biting her lips, and the prayer finds its own way out.

 

 

 

The second time Mary made bread, it was better than the first.  It wasn’t perfect (it was too sweet, and the center hadn’t cooked through, and the crust was soggy), but it was better.

 

The third time, though… the third time, Mary decided, as she pressed her nose into John’s chest, and held Sherlock’s arm around her waist a bit tighter, the third time would be perfect.

 

 

 


End file.
